1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a silver halide photographic photosensitive material and a method of forming a black-and-white image using the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent movie production, even for movies shot on movie films, a method in which movie film images (master images) are digitized to be synthesized and edited, and outputted again as analogue images onto a silver halide color photographic photosensitive material using a film recorder, is widely used. Many proposals have been made for silver halide color photographic photosensitive materials (color intermediate films) for use with output by a film recorder, including those described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,368,230 and 5,283,164, and FUJIFILM RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT Vol. 53, pp. 1-7 (2008).
In the movie production, although digital archives, which store digital data taken unchanged from the master, may be an effective archiving method, they fail to serve as a final archiving method due to uncertainty surrounding the format and stability of digital data storage media. From the viewpoint of preservation of cultural property in particular, the highest reliability is obtained by printing an image corresponding to once-digitalized data on a black-and-white silver halide photosensitive material (also called “silver halide film”), subjecting the black-and-white silver halide photosensitive material to development and fixing treatment so as to form a black silver image, and storing the resultant together with the digital data, and this procedure is recommended.
The archiving of such digital data on the silver halide film generally employs the film recorder used in the movie production process. Black-and-white silver halide photographic photosensitive materials are used for the archiving of the digital data by the film recorder.
When the above method is used with a conventional technique, image quality is deteriorated when the digital data is outputted onto the silver halide photographic photosensitive material at high resolution, which has not always been satisfactory from the viewpoint of obtaining sufficient quality corresponding to the capabilities of digital recorders, the performance of which has been remarkably improving. The deterioration of the image quality has been found to be greatly influenced by the development treatment of the black-and-white silver halide photographic photosensitive material.
The output from the film recorder is controlled to be optimum for the characteristics (characteristic curve) of the silver halide photographic photosensitive material on which the output is to be printed. When aiming for the reproduction of high-resolution digital images, it is necessary to suppress variations caused in the development treatment of the silver halide photographic photosensitive material as far as possible, and maintain the characteristics as of the time of calibration as far as possible. In particular, a large change in gradation on the characteristic curve may cause deterioration of the output image formed by the film recorder.
Now that most movies are in color, it has been getting more difficult to maintain the quality of black-and-white development processing liquid in photofinishing laboratories at which movie films are processed. Further, preparing black-and-white development processing systems of respective kinds is also difficult from the viewpoint of productivity. Silver halide photographic photosensitive materials which are less influenced by processing liquid quality, and which show favorable characteristics even when different black-and-white processing formulations are used, have therefore been strongly desired.